Note: The Monday Taki post is up. Not entirely related to this post, but the general theme is the same. Sunday Thoughts is up behind the green door. There is the SubscribeStar version and the Substack version.
Futurism was a social movement that started in the beginning of the last century in Italy and spread around the West in the first decades of the century. The futurists were not content with improvements to everyday life. They imagine a new world brought about the rapid advance of technology. The material advances of the industrial revolution would not just improve our daily lives. They believed the entirety of human society would be reimagined along technological lines.
The Futurists were not entirely wrong. The industrial revolution did usher in a mass reorganization of human society. Trains were not just faster than horses. They changed how we thought about moving people and goods. Wired and wireless communication added an immediacy to society. People were no longer finding out what happened after the fact but following what was happening as it happened. The old culture collapsed and a new culture arose in the 20th century.
A simple mental exercise makes this clear. A man living in 1750 America would have had no trouble navigating 1850 America. Sure, trains would be new to him and industry would be advanced. Otherwise, people lived pretty much the same. Now, take 1850 man and transport him to 1950. He would find himself in a world that was not just materially different, but culturally and spiritually alien. He was not in an improved version of his country. He was in a different world.
The futurists believed that technological progress would lead to human progress and by that they meant freedom from the human condition. The future would be slick, fast and exiting, as humanity explored its potential. One result of this was a rejection of the past, especially tradition. The futurists saw the past as a set of hands grasping at humanity from the grave. Another result is they believed violence was entirely appropriate to break the grip of the past in order to usher in the future.
The futurists were not entirely wrong. The two great industrial wars of the 20th century obliterated the old world. Into the void flowed what came to be known as the post industrial world. The West was not capitalist or socialist in the Marxist sense, but something of a fusion of the two. On the other hand, the human condition was not consigned to the dustbin of history. All of the old problems remained. The West simply had better stuff than in the prior ages.
Fast forward to this age and we have a new round of futurism. You can probably start the clock with Alvin Toffler, a futurist who got famous at the beginning of the microprocessor revolution. His books sold millions of copies and focused on society after de-industrialization. His books were popular in America at a time when the economy was shedding industrial jobs. His vision of the future promised something better than the old grimy industrial lifestyle.
Even though his books sold millions of copies, futurism did not catch on with the beautiful people until the late 1990’s. When technology became accessible to the technologically challenged, the future suddenly opened up to them. Apple products were sold to taste makers as a symbol of the progressive vision. Big tech began to market itself as a lifestyle, rather than as technological advance. Elon Musk went from bald PayPal investor to a futurist with a firm hairline.
The reason operations like the World Economic Forum have become popular with the beautiful people is these organizations are catering to the people who have tied their sense of self with their vision of the future. WEF has been around for a long time, but it was mostly a dull economic conference until they hit on futurism. You see it in this old presentation from a person named Thomas Birr. This is a timeshare pitch tailored for a crowd that believes they are world historic figures.
It should be noted that Mr. Birr promotes himself as a futurist. He labels himself the Chief Strategy & Innovation Officer at a company named E. On. Before that he was Senior Vice President Innovation & Business Transformation at a company with an equally ridiculous name. Mr. Birr is a visionary and we know that because he is paid to have visions, like a shaman. Before he was a visionary, he was an industrial sales rep who worked in the energy business.
One of the appeals of futurism is that it allows the futurist to look away from the present and focus on a blank page onto which he can draw his new world. It is a form of escapism, which suggests futurism is the product of crisis. The futurists of the last century did not see the two great industrial wars coming. In retrospect, the obliteration of the old war was a necessary step toward the new world. Interestingly, the Italian futurists all wound up supporting fascism.
There is a bit of irony. The futurist of this day invests a lot of time looking for potential fascists out among the Dirt People. Yet, it can be argued that fascism would not have been possible without the futurism movement. Once the focus shifted from the present to the future, the debate shifted from how to best to manage the present to who will run the society of the future. The great ideological conflicts of the 20th century were all about who will impose their vision of their future.
We see the same debates in this age. Immigration is about the demographics of future Western society. The antiwhites explicitly state that they wish to overthrow current society, which they call white supremacy, in favor of some new society organized around serving nonwhites. The legacy populations of the West are told by the people at the World Economic Forum that they are on the wrong side of history. Our debates about the future are all about who, not what.
All of this suggests that the futurist is a grim reaper. His arrival precedes some horrible conflagration that obliterates the present. A century ago, the futurists gave us two great industrial wars that reduce the West to ruins. The futurists of this age seem to be obsessed with war and famine. On the one hand they are instigating wars between the great powers. On the other hand, they are attacking the food supply. We will be lucky to live to see whatever futures results from all of this.
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I heard one of these futurists give a speech at an event a few years ago. His main purpose appeared to be convincing unnecessary white collar workers not to fear automation because there would still be plenty of work for them in our new automated glorious future. China was going to work out all the kinks and lead the world starting with a cashless society. What would happen to left side the bell curve workers was left unanswered. It was one of my first, “these people are really dumb and self absorbed moments.”
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Remember in the eighties how the Japanese and their economic muscle was going to lead the way and dominate for decades? America had better get on board.
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And while people were obsessed with Japan, China won.
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might want to check what their economy is doing right now. their society is getting ready to implode…but you should move there, totes!
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Their $55 trillion real-estate Ponzi is literally built from castles made of sand, as evidenced by all the YouTube videos showing their abominable construction quality.
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https://youtube.com/watch?v=Lxr9tvYUHcg
I think that was song of the year for 2017 in Japan. Or at least they were one of the mai features for NHK’s (Japan version of BBC)New Year progra that year.
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The bubble era was driven by asset inflation, mostly in property. I remember a lot of golf courses being built and a claim that the land underneath Tokyo was valued to be worth more than the continental United States.
1
i remember that too :). the genius behind that claim must have put a valuation of $0 on all the energy and mineral wealth in the US.
“His main purpose appeared to be convincing unnecessary white collar workers not to fear automation because there would still be plenty of work for them in our new automated glorious future. China was going to work out all the kinks and lead the world starting with a cashless society. What would happen to left side the bell curve workers was left unanswered.”
There’s a story, probably apocryphal, about Henry Ford II and UAW Leader Walter Reuther walking through a Ford factory (some stories have it at the Cleveland engine plant) and Henry pointing to some machine and bragging “Look Walter, this new machine will replace 100 union workers.” Allegedly Reuther replied something like “Very impressive Henry, how many brand new Fords will the machine buy?”
It seems futurism is a push to screw over workers even faster than before. The best part of the past few years were the arrogant press telling laid off blue-collar workers “Learn to code” and then when they lost their jobs whining and crying when they got the same advice thrown at them on Twitter.
The “Oh So Smart” faction of today think they’ll be able to impose their whims on society without pushback or harm. They may be in for an ugly shock.
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there’s also a story that HF paid his workers more than he strictly had to, so they could afford cars 🙂
The old futurists weren’t boring and had interesting predictions and visions of the future however ridiculous they might be. It’s a parade every self appointed visionary wants to get in front of and Toffler is a good example. A grift.
Now technologically wise it’s all going backwards and even more absurd. One example was equipping all commercial ships with giant wind kites to propel them across the oceans at slower speeds no doubt but with far less destruction of the environment.
Yeah, sails! Do these idiots realize even if this was workable , the wind doesn’t always blow, the sun always shine and the cost of building, maintaining is enormous?
Everyone of any importance is driven by ideological fervor that electric cars are the future. This is being foisted on us and will financially marginalize millions. Most here know the downfalls of this and the environmental repercussions of creating and mining materials but it is a juggernaut that keeps pushing forward.
Reality and it’s enforcement arm will deal with all of this but God knows what that will look like..
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Say what you will, but the old Italian Futurists imagined a prosperous, exciting, masculine future of speed, elegance, and heroic exploits. It may have been BS, but it presented an stirring future of unlimited horizons, and even lesser prophets like Toffler held out the prospect of a better and freer life. The new “futurists” hold out the prospect of driving around in electric golf carts, eating bugs, living in tiny pod-like apartments stacked up on top of one another, and catering to the endless demands of POC’s. Not a future that anyone would struggle for, even the POCs. Whatever the future holds, it isn’t going to be the one the WEF imagines.
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Complete blindness to the supply, maintenance, and repair burdens in any complex system are a blindspot that the Marxists seem to share with the vibrant peoples.
4
It’s the sizzle (and the wonderful aroma of burning flesh) that sells the steak, not the pasturage, the corn feeding, the raising of cattle, the slaughter, the butchering, the cooking, etc. Even that crappy McDonald’s hamburger has a dizzying supply chain behind it. An educated person might be capable of thinking of these background facts, but will rarely do so (nor needs to, in everyday life.) More worrying is that some fraction of the populace is incapable of grasping such concepts.
By no means solely a shortcoming of the Leftist or the Idealist, this is an eternal failing of Man: thinking that we can bring into existence these wonderful futures, merely by willing them.
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A lot of what’s called progress ain’t
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One aspect of futurism that deserves a second look is Jeffrey Herf’s Reactionary Modernism. I think you’ve mentioned reading it before. It was the animating ideology of the Worst People in Human History, so of course it is very very bad, and you definitely shouldn’t get your copy before they burn them all, but still — a fascinating look at how you can at least temporarily run an advanced industrial society while in effect making voodoo your official state religion. Lots of potential lessons there.
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It was the animating ideology of the Worst People in Human History…
—As if it needs to be asked, but, how did that work out for them?
Depends, and that’s the point — how much of that was historically contingent, and how much of it was baked into the logic of the premises? That’s the real trick of historical analysis. And even if it turns out that the end was dictated by the logic of the premises, there are still lots of lessons there. There’d be no point in studying it otherwise.
As one of America’s greatest philosophers said, “This shit’s chess; it ain’t checkers.”
What’s funny is how easy many parts of the future are easy to predict.
For example, a high school that once had great test scores but a terrible basketball team because its students were heavily Asian and white will have terrible test scores and a great basketball team if the area is taken over by blacks.
The same ability to see into the future can be done with the West. The US will continue to decline toward South American-levels of crime, poverty, corruption and general dysfunction as our demographics look more and more South American.
Europe will see a similar decline as it moves toward more Muslim and African.
I’ll also predict that the WEF and other very white organizations such as environmental groups will lose much of their sway. Those organizations are built for white societies. Nonwhites don’t care about utopian visions of the future, nor will they go along with stupid schemes that ask them to give up current pleasures for some magical future.
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That’s what is so hilarious about the “climate change” jackoffs. The browner the west gets, the less anyone will give two s**** about the environment or Gaia. It’ll all just be about survival – kinda like it was 10,000 years ago – what a glorious future indeed…
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I lived in a brown MENA country for almost five years, and I can tell you those people litter as if they had Allah’s blessing.
When I lived in an apartment complex, the refuse shed was always a pile of random, stinking filth. I actually felt bad for the garbagemen that did not have proper gloves to collect the waste. There were similar trash piles all over the streets.
At the site I worked at, everything was burned in a pit.
The city I lived in had open sewer discharges to the sea because dilution is the solution to pollution.
Recycling? LOL.
They also had various pie-in-the-sky solar energy scams that were nothing more than barely concealed grifting opportunities. Their European partners got so fed up with the lack of progress they pulled out of the deals.
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Actually such places usually have recycling after a fashion: trash pickers will look through refuse for anything saleable. In strict economic terms, ironically a poor nation where labor is cheap should maximize such reclamation of material with any latent value.
To a lesser extent we have that in “rich” nations with recyclable materials or (do they still exist) cans and bottles with a refundable deposit.
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I had a similar experience in India. They built a brand new Western style shopping mall. At the “sidewalk” at the entrance open sewage ran. It didnt’ seem to bother anybody coming and going.
Similarly, I went to a Tibetan temple at Bylakuppe. They built two massive temples with golden statues and intricate designs. Open sewage ran everywhere. Also, it was cool driving up. The monks children had guns. I was nervous wondering why kids in Tibetan robes were carrying guns. They were toy guns. So, not sure how well they are preserving their traditions even on what amounts to a reservation built during Nehru’s regime.
I was invited to top class Brahmin neighborhoods for concerts and parties. To call the holes in the roads potholes would be incorrect. A car couldn’t navigate the roads without getting damaged. Only a battletank could do it.
The West has standards. Remember that the Roman army invented decimation. The penalties for not doing your job were severe. That is a good thing, and something we have lost. We should inspire our youth, but for those who fail that invitation to elevate, sever penalty and thus proper incentives.
… severe penaltiies and thus …
Well, I would prefer South America to Africa if it has to be one or the other.
1
The visions our psycho futurists have in store for us are really quite amazing (in a substantially negative way) and no amount of suffering among the hoi polloi will deter their determination. Just like that Xhosa jogger mentioned in the Taki post. You’d have thought the surviving 20% of the tribe would have burned her at the stake or fed her to crocodiles, but no, she lived to the ripe old age of 57.
I hope we will have a better sense of punishment for our current crop of “visionaries” when the time inevitably comes.
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It is reported on various blogs that post mass vaccinations for covid total mortality is up and total natality is down, both significantly.
I do not know if that is true, but if it is the WEF crowd has created a world disaster. Birth rates were already below replacement levels in nearly every country not in Africa, and that includes all the Muslim countries outside African. In parts of Europe, namely Spain, Italy and eastern Germany, birth rates are half replacement level. There are abandoned towns in all those countries, some populated mostly by wolves.
The radical ecologists, like Paul Ehrlich and his friend John Holdren, want the human population reduced to a few million paleolithic hunter-gatherers. No industry. No agriculture. No science. No literacy. No medicine.
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After Future Shock came out in 1970, the principal at my middle-class high school in the Midwest gutted the already weak curriculum and substituted dumbed-down courses to “prepare you for the future.” Wonder no more why we baby boomers are so messed up.
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1
A colleague of mine offered older books from about 2010 the school system he worked at was ditching. Reading through the Social Studies and History books were shocking. The political leaning was actually not that bad, all thing considered, but they were incredibly dumbed down and devoid of useful information. The text is huge, the word complexity is juvenile, and content is vague and useless.
The degredation from when I went to middle school in the early nineties vs. now is just daunting to the point where someone who can read with no schooling could probably be dropped in an 8th grade social studies class and get caught up with the rest of the class within a week.
Whenever I hear some smug lecturer pontificate on us being the most educated population in history, I just want to scream.
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I can vouch for this. I interact closely with some young adults who go to what is supposed to be one of the top high schools in the country. It feeds the Ivy League and tier2 colleges. None of the people I met can think. They have zero ability to reason, think critically and they openly admit they don’t like to read.
The graduation speeches were a series of 2nd grade level Hallmark card poetry and a randomly selected multiple choice of wokester. Worse, there were no young men. There was not a single young man with charisma and presence. It was dominated by girls peacocking their college choices by festooning their caps with their college destination – identityless credential seekers.
I found the same with recent experience with a recent graduate of a managerial class Oxford chartered school where internationalist children go.
They can’t be engaged with reason nor will successfully out reasoning and out arguing them make them happily forfeit their positions of power. The US was set up on the premise that it would be a society of gentleman of honor who would act nobly and forfeit power, and submit to a consensus adoption of the best ideas.
There is an old Visconti movie that documents the first futurist phase ZMan discussed – the passing of the royalists to the liberal democrats. It is called “Il Gattopardo” – The Leopard. Visconti was aristocratic and his movies are true works of art. The visuals stunning, the accent of Italian crisp, clear and gorgeous, and the actors and actresses physically beautiful and immaculately coached on how to comport themselves as regals. In the final scene a rabble is coming and the young heir to the family says something to the effect, “We were the Leapards. It is the time of the jackals now.”
The US gentleman were Lions replaced by foxes. Now it is a bunch of rabid mangy dogs. It brings to mind my time in India when these mangy dogs would follow around the garbage truck which was an open aired truck bed with a massive overflowing pile of filth that the dogs would follow and feed upon. That is our new ruling class. It is going to make us long for the day of the jackals and the foxes.
I remember the TV series Rome when Antony returns to Attia after running from Pompei’s assassins. He returns and she chastises him for running, saying, “Why didn’t you kill them?” Antony replies, “Even a pack of mangy dogs can kill a Lion.”
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Barely on topic 🙂
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KForTikTc0I
Pure genius. Thank you for that.
I would have guessed Klaus Schwab, but there weren’t any pig farts following an annurism inducing, hemmorhoid pulsating “excrementation process.”
Sorry. Meant Brutus’ assassins.
The book the movie is based upon, “The Leopard” by Lampedusa, is one of the biggest bestsellers in Italy. The English translation is excellent.
Some freneds and I were speculating that the various elements of our ruling class, sensing that this will be the pan-Asian century led by China, are selling America to this new “Who” in return for becoming the managerial class that will facilitate the colonizing of America (including Canada) with the Asian overflow, replacing the “legacy demographic.” An analogy would be the Bosnian Muslims who, though of the same ethnic strain as their fellow Slavs, became the resident Ottoman managers of the Dalmation coast following the fall of Venice.
We imagined that our rulers are preserving America’s natural resources for exploitation by our new masters as our overseers engineer our economic collapse amid our racial and now gender rivalries.
I suppose this way of thinking amounts to seeing the future through the lens of the past, but there may be something to it nonetheless..
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If America is colonized by Asia it will be by India, not China. See Z’s post on Hindu Lebensraum.
1
Our entire ruling class has already been replaced. Very, very few of them have any kinship (either ethnically or religiously) with actual Americans. Selling out dirt people to a foreign power completely matches their M.O., and there are plenty of historical examples beyond the Ottoman Empire.
5
A bit off topic:
The latest evil insurrectionist was hunted down and arrested a couple weeks ago. He is a benign mormon guy who supported Trump and legally owned firearms. He walked in and out of the capital in five minutes. They claim he spoke with a federal bureau of entrapment agent and mentioned Mr. Hilter. His only crime was believing he still has rights. In all likelihood, they are hoping to drive him to suicide. They must have a tracker of some sort and their cold, empty, dark hearts rejoice each time a white, Christian man commits suicide.
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Melissa-
Wouldn’t surprise me.
I’m sure our three-letter agencies are well-versed in Stasi Zersetzung techniques to break people’s minds.
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They’re going to be doing this forever, aren’t they?
Like the Germans arresting 99 year old “This guy cleaned a toilet at a prison camp in WWII”?
“The year is 2090. The final Jan 6 insurrectionist was caught, incarcerated, and imprisoned for life, bringing an end to decades of fear, uncertainty, and doubt. Justice was served, the FBI always gets their [2090 pronoun lunacy]”
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The tracker is called a sail foam.
Nancy Pelosi, an unabashedly corrupt octogenarian, wants to start a nuclear war with China and no one in DC has the courage to stop her. And you can forget getting any help from the Stasi, as in arresting her for insider trading, for they are more corrupt than she is. So, do we just bend over and kiss our ass goodby?
No, that is what fat-ass RINO cuckolds do. Be the remedy. There really are not that many of those suicidal sociopaths running amok.
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If her plane mysteriously crashes or if her husband is hospitalized or dies suddenly forcing her to come home, Zman might have to rethink his opinion on the deep state. 🙂
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Some predictions about the future are almost inevitable. What background checks will do is sure to happen. People who fail a background check for whatever reason, the reason is never disclosed, will quickly realize that they will never be able to pass one. They will be denied employment, housing, travel, etc. Yet still they must eat, have warm clothing and a place to get out of the rain at night. None of that will be available through legitimate channels. So a caste economy will evolve. The bad background caste will be employed and serviced by quasi-legal businesses. Their offspring will be born into and spend their lives as servants to the higher caste. A new feudal system will take the place of the current proto-dystopia.
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But usually for only 1 or 2 generations. The servants in Victorian and Edwardian England were better fed, clothed and housed than the proles at the decorative iron gates, plus they had exposure to better manners, fine art music and literature. Who would not want to be the nanny or head chef at the Soros or Gates compound? Besides, every generation throws out a genius occasionally no matter how terrible their family conditions are, it’s like God laughing-
With respect to the Norwegian farmers culling their herds, the question is never asked,”who doesn’t get fed”.
Not all cattle and crops are going to be destroyed. So if yields are reduced by 40%, is it;
Africa
Asia
Europe
The America’s?
It’s math.
Sorry, no food for you!
And as for China “taking over” the United States,(North America), does anyone really think Mr.Han is going to get off a plane and be handed the guns and deeds to Farmer Browns stuff?
People have been watching too many movies, such as Red Dawn and the like.
I’m certainly not saying the future is rosey, but I think people, including posters here, underestimate the unwashed masses who actually, you know, do stuff.
(As a side note, I had much more I wanted to articulate, but it vanished as I wrote. For future reference, I should probably make a rough draft of my thoughts).
And that, ladies and gentlemen is why writers like Z are such a valuable resource. Five posts a week. Every week?!
It makes my head hurt just thinking about it.
Thank you Z.
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I’ve read that Ireland consistantly exported food throughout the potato famine.
Anyone here doubt that Hormel (or Cargill/ ADM/ Globofood Corp) would behave differently?
1
One aspect of being human the modern futurists seem to never get right is any sort of artistic beauty. There hasn’t been anything since Art Deco for a brief period over a hundred years ago. You notice all these futurist tours have no great Cathedrals, no great landmarks, no great expressions of a unique people. It’s all homogenous and utilitarian. with the entertainment for the masses being drab schlock.
For all their talk of the future, in truth they are simply technocrats ,and spiritual midgets.
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well isn’t that part of their general incompetence?
IMO, futurists are really only interested in creating widespread licentious behavior.
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“One aspect of being human the modern futurists seem to never get right is any sort of artistic beauty. There hasn’t been anything since Art Deco for a brief period over a hundred years ago.”
The relentless push for speed and efficiency means beauty and expression gets tamped down. I look at the auto industry: Henry Ford’s Model T was designed to be affordable, easy to build, repair, and maintain, but nobody would say it looked pretty. Credit GM with the idea of selling “sizzle with your steak” and actually styling cars to look aesthetically pleasing to the eye. And different year to year. True, it got really crazy in the 1950s (Tailfins, three tone pastel paint jobs, outrageous chrome), dialed back in the 60s, got overwrought again in the 1970s, and then came the regulators. The last truly innovative design was Ford’s first-Gen Taurus and Sable. Fuel Economy Uber Alles and Safety dictate design and to your point all cars, and increasingly CUV/SUVs all look the same because they’re regulated to slip through the air as smoothly as possible.
Efficient and reliable? Sure. Exciting and inspiring? About as inspiring as my GE refrigerator in our garage.
Beauty takes time and the cathedrals of old took decades, if not centuries to build and craft by hand. Doesn’t look good on the old spreadsheet. Can’t tie it out to a quarter you know.
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Excellent points. In most cases there must be a trade-off between beauty and efficiency/economy/etc. That GE refrigerator (or the Model T in its day) may seem boring and pedestrian. Certainly so, in terms of beauty or appeal. But for the engineers and other skilled minds that it took to create that product, they are the pinnacle of human ingenuity.
You can have pretty or practical, but it’s very hard to have both.
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Chet-
I believe the lack of compelling Futurist architecture is due to the fact that, at its core, Futurism is a soulless, secular, materialist movement.
Harari is completely wrong that the human organism doesn’t have a special, undefineable quality.
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Could it be that Harari senses his own lack of “a special, undefinable quality” and universalizes that perception so that it applies to the entire species? You nailed it with that word “soulless.”
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[Roger Scruton “Why Beauty Matters”] has entered the chat.
https://vimeo.com/549715999
– Not available/easily findable on YouTube…which tells you everything you need to know, really.
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someone here was posting about how wonderful life in Argentina was. they are on the verge of hyperinflation, and their economy is near to collapse. people are protesting in the streets, which means riots are a heartbeat away. my point is, there really is nowhere to run, the rot is comprehensive.
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I wish no ill on Argentina. But what you just described has happened many times in the history of that nation, as well as many of the wobbly nations in that part of the world. I am to some degree (a Literature one at least 😀 ) knowledgeable about Latin America, and I suspect that it’s hard to pass a lifetime in one of those nations without one or more of those upheavals that you’ve cited.
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Sometimes you need a revelucion every now and then to spice things up.
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It’s probably true that there’s nowhere to run, although some places are better than others. I don’t know much about Argentina, although I did see a video (4k walk on youtube) where the guy was walking around downtown Buenos Aires and it looked really nice. Clean, great architecture, and seemed very peaceful. But that’s just my impressions from a 20 minute video.
Another video from the same guy showed a beachwalk in nearby Uruguay. It’s shocking to see how much more fit and healthy-looking, (and White) the people at the beach were. The guy also produced a video walking the beach in Fort Lauderdale, where it’s overwhelmingly fatties and tattoos.
Steve Sailer has posted recently about Americans (mostly white Californians) moving to parts of Mexico City. I suppose they figure they’re surrounded by Mexicans in SoCal, so what’s the difference?
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Many futurist movements are best viewed as reactions to traumas. It is hard to appreciate today the huge dislocations of 1900-era Italian society. Industrialization had caused mass emigration abroad (that’s why I’m here now!), disruptions to centuries-old agricultural methods and internal migration of Italians south to north.
Making lemonade out of lemons, The Italian Futurists saw the path to socialism, (Mussolini started as a prominent socialist journalist after all) peace and human advancement within all this misery and dislocation. Obviously there was a lot of wishful thinking here.
I can’t help but wonder if the same thing is happening today. Globalism has clearly failed, as liberal democracies have promised material benefits they cannot deliver and the specter of mass migration threatens Europe and the US. Technology threatens to displace workers and crush dissent and national customs. So this obviously traumatic sh*t sandwich has been rebranded as the Great Globalist Future – “you will own nothing and be happy”.
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It would be interesting to get Zman’s thoughts specifically on Transhumanism (“merging man and machine,” as Elon Musk’s company Neuralink puts it). Some of those cats at the World Economic Forum appear to believe that one wave of the future will be implanting computer technology/cell phones directly into human bodies. Even if Z thinks that type of talk is delusional sci-fi-style grandiosity on the part of those big-tech mouthpieces, it could be enlightening to hear why he considers it as such. I myself have no idea what to make of it.
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It’s a non-starter. If you think about, it’s not much more than trying to fuse the smartphone with a human body, and even if it becomes technically possible, the main result will be an extension of what we already see people doing with cell phones. FWIW, Google glasses were the first attempt at augmented reality and it didn’t really pan out. The key thing to keep in mind is that IT is most popularly used to distract from reality, not supplement it.
8
I am skeptical about anything that glosses over the known obstacles. For example, enhancing our abilities with implants. The things we would like to enhance, like intelligence and memory, are areas about which we know relatively very little, compared to what we need to know. We have some idea about the genetics of intelligence, but we are generations away from fully understanding the combination of genes and environment that result in a high IQ.
How can we enhance our intelligence with AI when we are not even sure how to define intelligence and we have no idea what causes the variations we see in people? Much of what makes up transhumanism is like the green energy movement. Left out is the massive leaps in understanding required to even start doing anything useful.
A good example is the human eye. We can do amazing things with eyes. What we have not been able to do is fake a better one. In theory, we should be able to make artificial eyes that let you store what you see on a removable device, focus on objects a great distance away and even see in the dark. The problem is we have not figured out how to power them in a way that does melt you head. We need a huge leap in material science to create a decent replacement eyeball.
Relative to complex things like memory and IQ, the human eye is child’s play. When you move into the area of consciousness, then we are in a realm about which we know so little we cannot be sure consciousness actually exists.
11
Amazing article today ZMan.
I think this comment introduces to the Who and What the Why. There is no why. Let me explain. I was recently looking for a job and looking for something so technical that I could get away from the great replacement occurring in corporate life ( e.g. you are not wanted white man and this hiring and promotion practice is designed to enlist you to replace yourself) I discovered a company called Relativity. They 3D print rockets. They ruled themselves out with me when their DIE director insisted that anti-racism must be a practice that permeates every waking hour of my life.
In any case, back to The Why. In a long promo interview with their 20 something CEO he stated his why for 3D printing rockets. To paraphrase: He is motivated by how cool it would be when kids on Mars can zoom and TikTok kids on earth. It is similar to Bezos absolutely warped vision for space. Bezos had a childhood vision that we should be born in space in order to preserve the earth. We would be born and live in space to save the planet so we could visit it as tourists.
Their why is either infantile (TikTok between earth and Mars), or completely unhinged, (move life off of earth to save the earth for tourism from space).
We have no power. We must go underground, but we must still be Lions and we must articulate our why. It must be succinct and compelling.
We are Men of The West. We devote our lives to:
Knowledge
Honor
Truth
Excellence
Beauty
Family
Fatherland
We must cultivate and articulate our Why. It will be what our Remnant holds onto to get through this long winter. We must keep the flame burning in our hearts and in our deeds for and with our progeny. Our why must be powerful. It must inspire the latent greatness in our souls. We also need a practical plan to preserve our people, coupled with coordination and cooperation so that there remains a people who give home to the unparalleled radiance of the soul of man we call The West.
3
Exactly. The 19th-20th century pace of technological progress combined with the steady diet of Sci-Fi and futurism has engendered a fantastic hubris in both the general population and in scientists.
As far as the brain and consciousness go, we’re no better than medieval alchemists puttering around with the transmutation of base metals.
1
The main flaw I see in their propsed techno-dystopia is that it will require an order of magnitude more cheap, abundant, and reliable energy to implement, maintain, and grow.
It is not possible to achieve that level of energy abundance from wind and solar.
5
If we were only able to pen up all the asswipe Gaia worshiping, climate change fanatics and somehow harness the burning energy of their fanaticism, think of the places we could go, the industries we could power, the stars we could reach – it’s mind boggling.
5
1
One of the remaining dinosaur car magazines, Motor Trend, tested the new F-150 “Lightning” electric truck. They towed a selection of trailers behind the “truck” and found that towing a trailer reduced the pitiful range of this “truck” to less than 100 miles. Imagine having this rig and charging up your truck every 80 miles or so for 30 minutes, best case scenario. Imagine if there is what the English would call a “queue” at the charger and you have to wait an hour, two hours for a 30-minute “rapid” charge that only gets your battery back 80% full.
If you deal with hurricanes and live in a coastal area that requires evacuation, imagine a “queue” that stretched for a quarter-mile at the charger or more. Good luck getting out before landfall.
When I tow my boat or my camper trailer, my V-8 4-wheel drive truck gets a miserable 10 MPG, but with a 30-gallon tank, I need a 5-minute gas stop every 300 miles or so.
What those payola-grubbing writers at Motor Trend don’t realize is they will be obsolete when electric vehicles become the rule rather than the exception since there is no differentiation between one EV or another. They make only a whirring noise, there are no transmissions and differences in vehicles boil down to charging capacity and styling. It’s hard to be an auto enthusiast when vehicles are merely shapeless, joyless transportation pods devoid of character.
The reason for EVs is simple: The ruling class don’t want us driving cars. They don’t want us owning homes or anything of value. They seek our dependence on them for means of control. These demonic bastards get their jollies off controlling the masses.
As stated in a comment above, they want us crammed into diverse, filthy, crime-riddled megacities like in the Judge Dredd comics eating bugs, jacking off to porn, playing video games and doped on medical marijuana and pills. They’ll be the only ones with access to travel of any sort and they’ll eat steak dinners and laugh at the peons eating their protein paste.
That’s not much of a future. It sounds like Idiocracy crossed with Demolition Man. Where’s Edgar Friendly (played by a hilarious Denis Leary) when you need him?
24
Electric trucks pulling campers into the wilderness….along with a very noisy diesel powered generator in the truck bed to run in the backwoods for 12 hours to recharge the truck, thereby ruining the peace and quiet of everyone else.
Not a huge fan of the lefty “slash tires of SUV’s”. But they might be onto something in this instance.
(Spot on about control. Gas cars are freedom, full stop.)
3
The “slash the tires of SUVs” thing is hard for decent people. It’s a terrible thing to do to fellow citizens of your nation. You have to put it in the proper perspective. They are not your people. They are not your nation.
Imagine instead, guerrillas slashing the tires of vehicles that belong to an occupying enemy in your country. Would you not be a huge fan of that?
The leftist terrorists understand that they are at war. Normie does not.
2
From the Taki column: As usual, if you look up Nongqawuse and the Xhosa cattle slaughter and subsequent famine, there is no shortage of people who want to blame it on the White man. Check out the comments here:
https://www.wildcoast.co.za/nongqawuse
5
By now the choice should be clear. Bifurcation or extermination.
Bifurcation. Already Bluefuges are fleeing IL, CA, NY for TX & FL, possibly creating a independent white confederacy that can flourish.
Or
Extermination.Those Bluefuges fleeing will spread their anti white racism everywhere they go. The regime is busing illegals everywhere, eliminating hope for a new independent state.
8
That is the great paradox of that “blue flight” you are describing. Many (but not all) of the people ‘fleeing’ are those with the ways and means to flee. So it isn’t Joe Dirt packing up the station wagon. No, sadly, Joe Dirt is stuck now in his neighborhood with a dozen illegal beaners packed to the gills in a 2 bedroom house in every other house in his ‘hood.
The ones fleeing are largely the ones who voted for this stuff in the first place. They simply will never make the connection between their stupid ideas that they vote for and the downstream results. So they land in TX, FL, Montana, wherever to start the cycle anew and attempt to terraform functional states into dysfunctional sh-tholes. I hope those existing residents make it VERY hostile for them because like locusts they will destroy the place in short order before moving on again. Liberal bug hive people truly are insectoid in that way.
3
You often find that kooks like Thunberg and her enablers are active in a multitude of crazy schemes.
The other day my attention was drawn to this article:
an article in the Desert Sun: It’s time for Army Corps of Engineers to investigate the feasibility of moving water West (Sorry, no links because this is being called spam).
In short, the author wants our government to spend massive amounts of all our money to build an enormous 4000-foot-rise aquaduct to ship water from the Mississipi over the continental divide to The arid Southwestern states. It’s an insane boondoggle. I don’t have to be a civil engineer to figure that out, and I’d rather not take the time to go into all the reasons. I was curious about the author, Don Siefkes — the article gave no qualifications or background for him. It turns out he is also the head of an organization called The E100 Ethanol Group (search it) that goes around trying to lobby for the banning of all gasoline and diesel vehicles. They support replacement with ethanol instead. Because climate change and the environment and things. They’ve got a lot of information on the site about it, but I didn’t see anywhere an answer to the question — how much ethanol would that take and where would it come from? So I searched around a bit.
Right now the US produces about 15 billion bushels of corn a year. About 5 billion of that goes to ethanol. Almost all gas in the US is 10% ethanol. So, if you wanted to replace that with 100% ethanol, logically, you’d need ten times more ethanol: 50 billion bushels of corn worth. More than three times what we grow in the US for all purposes. Even the environmentalists would go crazy about that because they hate farming: all that fertilizer runoff.
But guys like this they flit from one crackpot thing to another and through sheer insane persistence they manage to make inroads. Now, we’re never going “E100” but the entire framework: “The Climate Crisis” is buttressed by legions of these crazies, each pursuing his or her own obsession.
Is it all emergent behavior, as the Zman says? Maybe. But I think there’s more to it than that. I think there’s a unifying energy to it that goes beyond the material.
14
The Great Salt Lake in Utah is pretty much a puddle now. Toxic dust from the now-dried lakebed is a concern as it gets blown into the air; the lake itself was responsible for a microclimate that put snow in the mountains in winter and melt back to the lake in the spring and summer…all of that is at risk.
US Senator Pierre Delecto (aka “Mittens”) wants to pipe water in from Colorado (also in a mega drought) to top off the Great Salt Lake.
(This plan is insane, unless it’s purpose is endless federal grift)
If civil war ever comes to the US, I don’t think it’s going to be the “-isms” that sets its off. It’s going to be wars over basic resources needed to survive.
8
The “futurists” are usually wrong. From what I can tell, they never get anything right.
There was a ton of “futurism” propaganda films and articles made back in the day. A lot of the films have been archived to youtube. One film I saw on the house of tomorrow (filmed in the late 60s) was so bad it’s comical. They predicted automated kitchens that create their own plasticware on demand to eliminate the drudgery of doing the dishes.
3
It is actually the sort of ultimate Cloud People vs. Dirt People ‘eff you’ if you really play the tape and think about it.
The Mississippi mostly gives sustenance, resources, and life to the ‘deplorables’ as it feeds primarily Red and Southern states. So diverting most of it across the ‘flyover states’ and using it to sustain California, I mean… that just seems obvious right? The Beautiful People, Cloud People, and their Beaner Pets are what really matter here. Plus, it will help with the decimation of the ‘other’ white people that can’t come soon enough. So its a Win-Win in the eyes of the Truly Important Folks®.
5
to complete the insanity, california just declined to build desalination plants!? there is infinite water in the pacific, literally on their doorsteps, but they won’t use it. honestly, the people of california deserve to die.
5
California was turned from a desert into an oasis by the long-term thinking White man.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TWvG1Q_AAlk
As California became more diverse, the long term planning, if it was thought of at all, was delayed to deal with more pressing matters in the present. They will be lucky to maintain existing water infrastructure. Hell, they will be lucky to preserve indoor plumbing and flush toilets.
3
It’s pretty pathetic that hispanic self-interest spells the end of mass immigration, but I’ll take it and hope whitey hits bottom, breaks the tech addiction, gets off his knees.
5
Better technology, bigger states, and all mass “utopia” schemes never lead to BETTER PEOPLE. Quite the opposite as they ignore human nature and are usually a smokescreen for small amounts of people to make fortunes and gain power.
What leads to better people?
1) Heredity and incentives for those with good characteristics to form families. Society’s verdict on this: that’s eugenics, nazi! give your money to the bums you selfish fascist!
2) Teaching children the difference between good and evil and how to avoid sin. Society’s verdict on this: that’s close-minded you transphobe bible thumper!
Globohomo must be destroyed.
11
And a happy Monday morning to you, too, Z!
The future would be slick, fast and exiting. Freudian slip? exciting–
1
In your recent Substack piece I’m not sure where you get the idea that Hinduism accepts that there may be no god. Au contraire, it’s polytheistic. Hare Krishna Hare Rama! Om Namah Shivaya! Ganesha Sharanam! And then there are the 1008 names for the Divine Mother.